Scary movies can have lasting effects on children
and teens, study says

By Bernie DeGroatNews and Information
Services

One in four
college students in a recent study said they experience lingering effects
of a frightful movie or TV experience from childhood. These effects range
from inability to sleep to avoidance of situations portrayed in those
movies. File photo

While the short-term effects of
watching horror movies or other films and television programs with
disturbing content are well-documented among children and teens, a new U-M
study shows that long-term effects can linger even into adulthood.

In
their study "Tales from the Screen: Enduring Fright Reactions to Scary
Media," U-M researcher Kristen Harrison and colleague Joanne Cantor of the
University of Wisconsin found that 90 percent of the study's participants
(more than 150 college students at Michigan and Wisconsin) reported a
media fright reaction from childhood or adolescence. Moreover, about 26
percent still experience a "residual anxiety" today.

"This may not be
surprising, but the proportion of participants--one in four--who reported
fright effects that they were still experiencing indicates that these
responses should be of major concern," says Harrison, assistant professor
of communication studies. "These effects were more serious than jumpiness
at a slammed door or the need to use a nightlight. They ranged from an
inability to sleep through the night for months after exposure, to
steadfast and continuing avoidance of the situations portrayed in the
programs and movies."

The researchers, whose study will appear in a
forthcoming issue of the journal Media Psychology, found that 52 percent
of the sample reported disturbances in normal behavior such as sleeping or
eating after viewing a frightening film or TV program. More than a third
avoided or dreaded the depicted situation in their own lives, and nearly a
fourth reported obsessive thinking or talking about the frightening
stimulus.

While more than one-fourth of the study's participants still
experience such aftermath, the duration of the effects--both past and
present--range from less than a week (about 33 percent of the sample) to
more than a year (about 36 percent).

According to the study, a wide
range of symptoms were reported, including crying or screaming (27 percent
of participants), trembling or shaking (24 percent), nausea or stomach
pain (20 percent), clinging to a companion (18 percent), increased heart
rate (18 percent), freezing or feeling of paralysis (17 percent) and fear
of losing control (11 percent), as well as sweating, chills or fever, fear
of dying, shortness of breath, feeling of unreality, dizziness or
faintness, and numbness (all less than 10 percent each).

"It appears,
then, that the physical and emotional fright reactions our sample
experienced in reaction to media stimuli are very similar to those
typically experienced in reaction to real-life stimuli, a finding that is
consistent with the principle of stimulus generalization," Harrison
says.

The most frequently reported type
they found is blood/injection/injury (reported by 65 percent of the
sample). One participant said that in the movie Jaws, it was not the
shark or actual deaths that was frightening, but the blood.

"For about
two months after the movie, I had nightmares about blood," the participant
said. "The nightmares didn't always involve sharks, but always contained
gross amounts of blood. To this day, I remain horrified of
blood."

Harrison says that it is not clear whether this type of stimulus
was mentioned most frequently because it is inherently more frightening
than the other types, is the most common stimulus found in the mass media
or, for some reason, is recalled more easily.

"In any case, the ubiquity
of blood and gore in the U.S. media should be cause for concern regarding
its potential for causing enduring fright reactions in children," she
says.

Disturbing sounds/distorted images is the other most common type
of fright stimulus found in films and TV programming (reported by 60
percent of participants). One participant was scared by the heavy
breathing of the killer in the film Halloween, while several others
found the suspenseful music in Jaws frightening.

The other three
classes of
stimuli were reported by a minority of the sample: situational (33
percent), animal (12 percent) and environmental (9 percent).

According
to Harrison and Cantor, the younger the study's participants were when
they viewed a scary movie and TV program, the longer-lasting the effects.
In addition, their data provide little support for the popular notion that
children who like thrilling media genres will be better able to handle
their effects than children who do not like them.

Further, the average
duration of fright effects for participants who watched frightening media
because someone else was watching or wanted to watch was significantly
higher than the duration for those who sought out the film or program
themselves.

"The enduring fright reactions reported in this study were
not the product of strange or unusual viewing circumstances," Harrison
says. "Considering the abundance of graphically violent content in movies
and on premium cable television channels, as well as the tendency for
younger family members to go along with older members' media choices, it
is not surprising that enduring fright effects from scary media were
prevalent in our sample."

Finally, regardless of what frightened them as
children, the study's participants appeared to know which coping
strategies worked best for them, the researchers say. For example, those
younger at exposure relied more heavily on behavioral coping strategies
(covering their eyes, leaving the room, hugging a pillow), while those
older at the time of viewing used cognitive strategies (reassuring oneself
that "it's just a movie" or "this could never happen in real
life").

"Many adults have learned to recognize the types of stimuli that
frighten them and can choose movies and programs carefully to avoid such
content," Harrison says. "Given that very young children may not yet know
what types of stimuli frighten them most, and that they do not enjoy the
power to choose which media the family will view, they are in special need
of protection from exposure to such scary stimuli before coping strategies
are necessary.

"It is reasonable to recommend that we pay closer
attention to the potential media stimuli may have for creating
long-lasting fears of the surrounding world, fears that can interfere with
normal functioning. Given that normal functioning of children is an
essential goal of child-rearing, parents should be aware of the types of
media that may contribute to enduring fright effects in their children."